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Monday, 12 April 2010

I ate my first slice of this cake in 1996 and I couldn't believe my whole life had gone by without it.

The sticky-sweet-bitter orange flavour combined with the richness of almond meal is just too good to be true. I have fond memories of my mother and I devouring slice after slice at an ice cream parlour near her work.

It’s a commonly served cake in Sydney cafés and usually comes with a dollop of whipped cream, but I prefer it alongside thick, creamy, sour yoghurt to cut through the stickiness of the cake.

When I made this for my dad and stepmum (and Jonas!) for Easter Sunday lunch, I served it with King Island Dairy’s cinnamon and honey yoghurt, but sheep's milk yoghurt would also be excellent. You could also use frozen yoghurt or natural Greek-style yoghurt sweetened (only slightly) with honey.

What has always put me off making it was that you had to boil the oranges for hours to prepare them. But, when the lovely Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella posted it on her blog, one very clever cookie (Julie from Cookbook Addict) pointed out that these days all you need is a microwave and 8 minutes!

How wonderful!

Now preparing this cake consists of zapping some oranges, cracking some eggs and whizzing everything in a blender. It’s absolutely delicious and so easy to make I’d bet $100 that a chimp could do it. (Any zoologists willing to test this theory out?)

Wikipedia has a fascinating paragraph on the origin of the English word orange, a long journey through land and time:“The word orange is derived from Sanskrit नारङ्ग nāraṅgaḥ "orange tree." The Sanskrit word is in turn lent itself as the Dravidian root for 'fragrant'. In Tamil, a bitter orange is known as ணரன்டம் 'Narandam', a sweet orange is called நகருகம் 'nagarugam' and நாரி 'naari' means fragrance. In Telugu the orange is called నరిఙ 'naringa'. The Sanskrit word was borrowed into European languages through Persian نارنگ nārang, Armenian նարինջ nārinj, Arabic نارنج nāranj, Late Latin arangia, Spanish naranja, Portuguese laranja, Italian arancia and Old French orenge, in chronological order. The first appearance in English dates from the 14th century. The name of the colour is derived from the fruit, first appearing in this sense in 1542.”

Thank you, Anna, for a very impressive and entertaining website. I have been following all your recipies silently and from the sidelines. I am writing because I am not much of a baker but I wanted to try this fabulous sounding cake. What confuses me is there is nothing in the indredients, such as flour to make it look like a cake as in the picture. Do ground almonds and baking powder make it look so fluffy? How fine do you normally grind the almonds? If it is very fine, can I use almond flour? So many questions, eh?

anon - the ground almonds (almond meal) acts as a flour and while the cake is soft and moist, it's more dense than fluffy. instead of grinding the almonds myself (and worrying about getting a fine enough texture) i just buy almond meal from the supermarket.